By: Travis Naughton
Late one evening, (or early the next morning), about thirty years ago, I was helping my friends Lynn and Steve polish off a case of Natural Light beer in the basement of Lynn’s parents’ house. As is the case with most of the “lost nights” of my inebriated youth, I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do recall laughing a lot. That is, we laughed a lot—until the moment when Lynn calmly reached for one of his hunting rifles, aimed it squarely at Steve’s forehead, and without a moment’s hesitation, pulled the trigger. Click. In a span of about five seconds, Steve’s emotions changed from being happily oblivious to thoroughly terrified and to absolutely furious. As I watched the scene unfold from a few feet away, I, too, went from feeling completely mortified to utterly outraged. “Relax,” an amused Lynn said as he revealed a small object he’d been holding in his hand. “I removed the firing pin.” Steve and I failed to see any humor in the stunt, and we proceeded to blast Lynn with a double-barrel of fury and revulsion until we took our leave of him. A year or so later, Lynn and another member of our circle of friends named Wes went to a shooting range to test their marksmanship with a pair of handguns: a .22 caliber semi-automatic and a .44 magnum.
See more in this weeks Boone County Journal
Facebook Comments